category: Key West Florida

From the Bride: We got married at Sunset Key Cottages in Key West, Florida. It is a beautiful private island just off of Key West. It has gorgeous little cottages that look out to the beach and is filled with lush bougainvillea gardens all around. When we got engaged it seemed like a large task to find a great venue for our wedding. I am from Texas and my husband is from the UK but we live in Australia and met 5 years ago in Brazil. We had guests coming from four different countries so finding a “middle ground” that had meaning to us was really important. My family has been vacationing at Sunset Key Cottages since I was a little girl. My parents are Cuban so we love that their culture is so close to Key West. We instantly knew it would be the perfect place for our wedding. It has family history and we loved the idea of giving everyone a vacation to a new place. Sharing a place that we love with everyone we love was a great feeling.

Besides adding some fun to their wedding, which every wedding should have, the couple had other reasons for choosing to have a destination wedding in Key West. “We chose Key West because I wanted a destination that felt like a tropical getaway, but was still in the United States, so guests wouldn’t have to worry about international travel or needing passports to attend,” says the bride. “The funny thing is, I had actually never even been to Key West before I booked everything. I made my decision because Lyle had spent a lot of time there and he loved it. Lyle was a little nervous that I wouldn’t like it because he feared it might be different than I was picturing, which was that it’s a lay-on-the-beach type place, but I instantly fell in love when we went there for the first time for a planning trip.”

For guests, they were excited to travel to Key West for the couple’s big day. Many of the guests had never been to Key West before and had always wanted to go, while others had been to the location and couldn’t wait to go back. “Others that didn’t really know what to expect had a great time, so it was a great mix,” says Heidi. “There were some that couldn’t attend because it was far for them to travel, but they also wouldn’t have been able to make it if we had it in our hometown, so although we missed them greatly, we didn’t regret our decision in the slightest.”